susanstars

Portland, OR, US contributor

I'm a jewelry designer, writer, and crafter in Portland, Oregon, and I love making things, vintage and thrift-store shopping, and writing about it all. I mostly do jewelry-making, sewing, and general crafts projects for CraftStylish, which are my favorites!

I'm the author of Button It Up and Bead Simple, and the co-author of Super Crafty with Cathy Pitters, Torie Nguyen, and Rachel O’Rourke. I also write a daily craft blog, westcoastcrafty.com, and you can find more of my crafty projects and writing at susanbeal.com.

Rework a forgotten piece of vintage costume jewelry into this striking earrings and necklace set, perfect for a gift or a summer wedding! This project is very flexible—just choose an old necklace you haven’t worn for a while and salvage the beads for an all-new configuration.

My New Year's resolution is to keep my beads and charms organized so my craft room doesn't turn into a sparkly, shiny mess and a half. Here's how I redid my bead boxes for an easy and pretty storage system!

I made up sets of felt fortune cookies and mini matching rings for my valentines this year! This is an easy and fun little project that you can customize with your favorite colors or a personalized fortune just for the lucky recipient.

I wanted to make some pretty button-themed treats for my book party this weekend, so I baked some button shortbread cookies and whipped up these fun button cupcake toppers, too. Here's how to make your own version any time you have something crafty to celebrate!

A handmade cookbook full of treasured family recipes is a thoughtful gift for Mother's Day or for a newly married couple. You can make it as simple and homemade or as sleek and professional as you like!

Since I had so much fun making shrink-art buttons a few months ago, and I adore rhinestones and vintage beads, I thought I'd make a piece of jewelry using some favorite bits and pieces for my last tutorial here at CraftStylish. Thank you to everyone in the community for your great comments and helpful feedback, and I hope you have enjoyed my posts!

Transform a few wooden discs into fun, sparkly jewelry that's just right for summer! I used some of my favorite Crafty Chica imagery and added a few rhinestones for extra pop, but this project is ultra-customizable, so you can mix in the colors or style you like best.

Make simple, inexpensive, and cheerful hanging flower "baskets" out of recycled metal cans! These would be perfect to decorate a backyard or patio for a spring party, an informal wedding, or just for fun.

Save a few empty baby food jars (or any other small glass containers) and turn them into sweet little presents for friends! I made a chai-tea kit and a teeny-tiny terrarium with mine, but the possibilities are endless.

Babies seem to find things that make noise irresistible...so I recycled two empty plastic wipes packages into a secret crackler inside a simple felt owl toy for my daughter! She loves grabbing it and hearing that satisfying crispy, crinkly sound.

If you have a plain pair of shoes that need a little pick-me-up, how about adding a button rosette for a sweet and spring-y makeover? Choose two favorite buttons in coordinating colors for a super-personalized update.

I picked up a few pieces from the new Orla Kiely household line at Target—perfect for storing my favorite craft supplies in style! Of course, you can use any organizing pieces like these, but I love her prints and thought it was fun to mix and match them with my own stuff.

Like everyone else in the craft world, we were so glad to hear that the CSPS granted a one-year stay on the CPSIA legislation last week! Here's a bit more on the updates we've gotten, and what you can do to help the effort.

January is the perfect month for a low-key dinner party for friends, and what could be better than a quick, easy crafty project to decorate the table? Make this set of wineglass charms for yourself or your hostess in just a few minutes!

If you are looking for a glamorous project to use up shiny, sparkly jewelry and beading bits, try Jennifer's fantastical 3D collage! As a bonus, she gives instructions for making a costume-jewelry Christmas tree project, too.

If you're lucky enough to live in Seattle or Southern California, don't miss Urban Craft Uprising or the first-ever LA Craftacular! Along with great handmade jewelry and craft shopping, there are lots of cool extras like DIY projects and craft book signings, too.

Whip up some fun, sparkly ornaments for holiday decorating or to adorn a handmade gift for a friend. This is a perfect little instant-gratification project: Cut it, glue it, let it dry overnight, and there you go.

Jessica Wilson, aka Jekbot, has a lovely idea for keeping her ribbon organized in a flurry of beautiful colors. Fill a suitcase or another box with your spools of ribbons and trims facing upwards, and you'll never have to hunt around for just the right one again!

I asked Jenny Ryan of Felt Club and Torie Nguyen of Crafty Wonderland for their advice on applying for a craft fair—especially a big event like a holiday show! Here are their tips for helping your work shine through an endless sea of applications.

Keeping your beads and crafty supplies organized and accessible is challenging enough, but once you've made yourself a handful of necklaces, earrings, and hair clips, how do you keep those neat and tangle-free? I've finally found the perfect jewelry organizer to display my collection, and here's a great idea on how to make your own, too.

Beaducation has a whole array of cool online classes for making all kinds of jewelry projects... from (free!) basic tutorials to intricate, gorgeous chainmail, crochet, and wirework pieces, there's something for every skill level.

Once you've collected or made yourself a handful of brooches and buttons, how do you keep them organized and off your dresser or nightstand? I've come up with a simple solution to display my favorites.

Crafter extraordinaire Nancy Flynn has put together some really fun ideas for making jewelry and accessories in her book, Jeaneology... but the twist is that they're created with recycled denim! Here are a couple of my favorite projects from her collection.

Craft In America is a documentary, traveling museum exhibition, and gorgeous, vividly photographed book all in one. The collection features craft designers and artists in every medium, but of course some of my favorites are the jewelers and beaders...

If you are reading craft blogs regularly, it's super handy to keep your collection of favorites in one convenient place. I use Bloglines myself, but Google Reader has plenty of fans too. Here's a little how-to along with a list of 25 of my favorites you might like to browse through

CRAFT: magazine has a simply amazing daily blog, featuring an incredible array of projects to make, cool sites to check out, or handmade pieces to browse and buy. And best of all, they even have an entire category of posts on jewelry!

Starting up your own beading or crafty circle and sharing ideas, techniques, and supplies with friends can be a lot of fun! Craft maven Diane Gilleland was kind enough to share plenty of tips for getting a jewelry-making group off the ground.

New craft-design site Ponoko offers a very innovative service: submit your original ideas and the company will turn them into fabricated pieces for customers to snap up -- perfect for jewelry and beyond.

I love vintage and new buttons, but as I've accumulated more and more of them, my collection has been getting a bit out of control. So I came up with a few ideas for keeping them streamlined instead of letting them take over my whole craft room.

If you do much jewelry-making and beading, you probably have a million things to keep track of—jump rings, wire, clasps... Here's how I keep mine organized and easy to grab when I'm working on a project.

Whether you're looking for vintage Lucite, trade beads, or semiprecious beads, Dava Bead and Trade has a very cool selection of unusual pieces to browse online or in person at their shop in Portland, Oregon.

Here's how to turn a wedding ring (or any ring) into a pretty pendant. I've made an easy-to-follow video tutorial in the companion post so that you can learn how to make the center-bead dangle, using a wrapped-loop technique.

Once you've been collecting jewelry-making treasures for a while, storing and organizing them can become an overwhelming endeavor! I have a pretty huge collection at this point, so I've done my share of endlessly arranging and rearranging ... but here are a few things have worked well for me.

Toho Shoji is one of my favorite bead stores, and every time I’m in New York, I go there to browse everything and pick up new bits and pieces to work with. If you should ever find yourself in the Big Apple, be sure to stop in. Give yourself plenty of time because there is a lot to see.

If you're a jewelry maker, sooner or later, you're likely to end up with a dilemma: how to keep your work organized, i.e., untangled and nicely arranged, and how to store all of your finished pieces. Once I realized that I had a problem on my hands, I came up with some solutions that have worked out well.

Selling your jewelry on Etsy is easy. What requires a bit of skill is learning how to draw attention to your shop on a site that has more than 400,000 listings. Here are some great tips on how to get your work the attention it deserves.

I love all things vintage, and some of my favorite sources for vintage jewelry-making inspiration come from the craft books and magazines of the past. You can find these treasures online and in thrift stores. Here are some great places to hunt for true vintage crafting magic.

Meet the inspired jewelry-making world of Laura Stokes. From her own line of unique jewelry creations to her amazing hand-crafted supplies available via her Web site, this California-based designer does it all. Here is a jewelry resource that you won’t want to miss.

If you’ve never been to Etsy, I highly recommend that you go to their site. It is an incredible resource for all things crafty: great supplies, handmade items, and of course brilliant inspiration. The site is super-easy to navigate and is one of my favorite places to go looking for awesome jewelry-making finds. Here are some tips to help you find what you’re looking for.

Finding a vintage trinket, charm, or bauble at a yard sale or a favorite thrift store can feel like you've struck jewelry-making gold! Here are some of my best tips for spotting treasures among castaways.

Craftypod is the blogging home of Portland crafter, Diane Gilleland, aka, Sister Diane, leader of the Portland Church of Craft. This extremely talented lady has a new project that I'd like to share with you.

Whether you’re a beginning beader or you’ve been making jewelry for quite awhile, you probably have plenty of favorites in terms of wire—both materials and gauges. But if you’re wondering what the best choice for a project might be, or whether craft wire or sterling is the better bet, here are my recommendations for what to use in your jewelry-making projects.

If you're ever in L.A. and on the lookout for jewelry-making supplies, you must plan a trip to Berger Beads. And now that they have a Web site and expanded mail-order services, you can check them out no matter where you are!

I'm so excited to see the CraftStylish site come together and to share my favorite crafty resources and projects with everyone. Thanks so much for checking out my jewelry-making and beading posts, and I'd love to hear what you think of it all!

Hi, and thanks for the comments! Colleen, they have rusted a bit in a month outside, but not dramatically. If I bring them in for winter, I will put them on something to make sure they don't mark a tabletop or any other surface.

merryme, my best suggestion for plants that wouldn't need drainage holes is succulents - I have some in closed containers in my kitchen and they've done fine. Otherwise, maybe putting a simple rug or towel under them could work, or piercing holes in an old tupperware or other plastic lid and rigging it up under the cans to catch the water? What a fun project to do with your class :)

oh, thanks so much everyone! I'm glad you like the idea, I would love to see some handmade owls out in the world and I think a fabric version would be fantastic - using prints or patchwork could be really fun :)

sewitall, I completely agree that safety is crucial. We have two handmade toys, a ball and a penguin (made by friends, not me) with bells inside - both are very securely sewn and the toy is well padded so the bell is deep inside layers of stuffing. Months later, the seams are still perfectly intact and I've kept an eye on them to make sure they stay that way! My daughter also has a commercially made toy with a squeaker deep inside the stuffing and it's also in very good shape after she's played with it.

janaogletree, the only reason I added those extra buttons is that the covered ones have an empty space on the back instead of a flat surface. They'll glue fine (metal to metal is great) but creating flat backs with those glued-in buttons gives the covered buttons more total surface to join, instead of just the thin circle rim touching the bracelet links, so it's a sturdier piece.

thanks, tabbott! I actually like cutting them by hand since my glass marbles are usually not an exact size or perfect circle shape. I used to use a 1/2-inch punch but it only looked good with similarly shaped ones and left gaps at the edges of the bigger marbles.

The nicely sized discs you found sound perfect, and what a thoughtful personalized gift for your students - how cool! I'd love to see them if you want to add them to the gallery :)

I hate the empty bobbin moment! my new sewing machine won't wind them while you sew (unlike my old basic nothing-special model which was great for that) and thankfully I got a Sidewinder... but it is still maddening!

I also hate re-threading my serger and most of all when the long skinny virtually invisible wire needle thing is nowhere to be found. Serging stresses me out, when it goes wrong it's a nightmare.

Like other folks have said, I really wish I had learned to sew from my grandmother but she passed away when I was 12 and just a little bit too young to sit down at the machine with her. She made me the sweetest things and I still have three of the bias-tape-tie sundresses she made me in the fabrics I picked out - I'm saving them for my daughter, Pearl. I also have some of her half-finished needlepoint that I hope to complete some day.

Pam, I'm so sad that you weren't able to keep that marvelous button collection for you and Diane, but luckily you've been able to pass on so many crafty gifts to her :)

ugh, so many of these hit home. I'll add: placing an online order, or leaving the craft store with my bag of stuff, and suddenly realizing the next day that I need one more crucial thing that would have been so easy to pick up in the same trip.

I was at the giant JoAnn just yesterday and what do I desperately need today? Tissue paper!

pattyannie, I will look for direct links or product numbers for the exact ring and bracelet blanks I used and post those as soon as I have them. You can also find some good options at http://rings-things.com.

also, a quick note: I used white shrink plastic sheets but you can also buy the clear/"frosted" style which are nice to color over. (Both of them are easy to see through and trace onto, it's kind of personal preference which one you like the look over better.) I think the repurposed #6 plastic would probably come out more like the frosted does, since it starts out clear. I have to try that!

Dawn, I just saw your comment. I also buy some from a big craft store as well as other places and here are my suggestions:

-look for "clear" or "ice clear" on the label instead of "luster" or something like that. The iridescent ones are so much harder to see through for photos and images, I hate it when I accidentally get that kind.

-I usually assume about a third or half the glass bits won't be perfect so I sort them out and use them for something else - plant pots or mosiac or something? Or I just recycle them with the glass bottles.

-Have you tried looking at a pet supply store? Sometimes they have them with the aquarium stuff. Ditto a floral supply shop or larger florist with the arrangement supplies. I used to have a good source online and I wish I could recommend it, but they discontinued carrying them (bummer!) so now I look at craft, pet, and floral supply stores... and if it says luster it stays on the shelf! :)

Hope that helps, and I'd love to see your magnets if you want to share photos!

thank you SO much for the comments, everyone! I am so glad that you like the idea - I loved making this little set of buttons for fun and I would love to see yours if you try it too!

I did use the Shrinky Dinks brand of shrink plastic (if I remember correctly - the package is in the other room). I bought mine at Collage, a store here in Portland, but you can find it at Michaels for sure. That's a great tip about the #6 plastic!

Jan, I haven't washed these, but if you make a sample one you might try hand-washing it first to see how it does - depending on what marker/ink you use I think it could have very different results. You could also add a stronger sealant to cover and protect the finish - I'll see if I can find any suggestions for what would work best to make them more durable. I am using mine for jewelry so I hadn't thought about this stuff until now.

Char 50, this is definitely the window for us to contact senators (either the two representing our home states, or Senator DeMint, who seems very focused on protecting small businesses - thrift stores, handmade crafters, and shop owners) and bring up the points we feel strongly about so that the law is as fair as possible. I agree that the issue of whether or not supplies - rather than handmade items made with those supplies - have toxic chemicals is what should be targeted, and this first step in delaying the law has given us the space to make our opinions known. Besides senators, you can also contact CHA, which has been a major advocate to protect its members and the craft industry in general.

We'll see how it unfolds, of course, but being proactive has certainly made a big difference so far!

those are awesome, Erika. I love Star Wars too, and now you can enjoy those super cool graphics while you're shopping!

I also hesitate about cutting up vintage treasures (like Vera textiles or barkcloth or Star Wars sheets) and the stained --> new life rule works for me, too. I keep some things precious and mint but when something cool has already seen some good living, it's fun to rework it, that's for sure.

thanks to both of you for your comments! Ancee, I know what you mean about the contrast, it was a rainy day in Portland when we filmed it, which didn't help. I'm definitely a crafter more than a filmmaker! I'll try to re-shoot this one with a lighter background, but hopefully it's helpful for now.

I agree - I find crafting very soothing and it's been really nice during these uneasy weeks. I gocco-printed some get-out-the-vote postcards and I'm knitting a scarf for my baby's Halloween costume and both have felt very meditative. As you and Linda have said, I feel less impulse to buy new stuff when I feel fulfilled and creative. and I value the handmade so much more, whether it's mine or someone else's!

Michaela, what you said about watching the debate and beyond was very powerful. thank you!

thank you! I love bringing it along to the bead store for instant comparisons when I'm shopping. I can never exactly remember what the 12mm vs. 14mm looks like, and it's so much easier when they're right next to each other :)

One of my favorite sites is the Obama Craft Project blog and flickr pool - http://www.flickr.com/groups/obamacraftproject/

I Gocco-printed some map postcards to get out the vote last month, which was a lot of fun. Here are some pictures if anyone is interested: http://www.flickr.com/photos/susanstars/sets/72157607616027010/

back again to mention that I want to try this with monochromatic ribbon - weaving the same color through for a subtler woven look - and maybe a small embellishment over the finished surface. Thanks again for the super great idea and tutorial!